MY BACKGROUND
Thirty years. Four exits. Two CEO seats.
I've been on the management team of two Fortune 500 companies and the leadership team of two venture-backed companies. I co-founded my own startup. I've been CEO of two private-equity-backed businesses.
01 · OPERATING
4
exits
~$1B
capital raised
~36
companies bought or sold
B2B SaaS · Healthcare · Financial Services · Services · Consumer
Commercialization · Growth · Scale · Turnaround
United States · Europe
What matters more than the totals is the range. Buying and selling are not the same skill, and they're usually learned separately.
I've raised money and I've been the person deciding whether to give it. That's the reason I can tell a founder what the other side of the table is actually optimizing for — I've sat in that seat too.
02 · BOARDS
I still sit on the other side of the table.
Alongside the advisory work, I serve on the boards of private-equity-backed companies — usually mid-market, between one hundred and five hundred million in revenue, and usually in situations where the plan and the results have diverged.
That work is the reason I'm confident about something I tell founder-CEOs constantly: boards don't lose faith because of bad news. They lose faith when the CEO can't explain what changed. I watch it happen from the board side.
The scale is different. The table is different. The work is the same: find what's actually broken, decide what has to be true, point the team at it, and manage the people holding the capital.
"I have had the privilege of working with Dave as an advisor for the past four and a half years, and I can say without hesitation that he has been one of the most important people in both the growth of our company and my own development as a CEO. When Dave started working with us, we were a very different business. With his guidance we have scaled into a company generating strong, profitable revenue."
Samuel Saltzman · CEO, Outlast
03 · TODAY
Enjoy The Work.
I've been a partner at Enjoy The Work for more than five years. It's a five-partner firm advising venture-backed founder-CEOs. I work on the business, not the technology.
The methodology is the firm's — built and refined across hundreds of companies, and I teach it freely. What I add is the operating history behind it.